1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to apparatuses and methods for gel molding and culture, more particularly to apparatuses and methods for high-throughput three-dimensional gel molding and culture.
2. Description of the Related Art
In research related to life science, culture (e.g., cell culture) is a basic laboratory technique. Cell culture mostly used in research is monolayer culture that belongs to 2-D (two-dimensional) culture. Cells show different physiology in 2-D and 3-D (three-dimensional) cell culture systems.
The 3-D cell culture system is able to establish environments that are more similar to in vivo environments, thereby inducing cell behavior that is more analogous to in vivo cell behavior. Consequently, 3-D cell culture is gradually regarded, and is widely adopted in studies related to drug screening and cell biology. In most processes of 3-D cell culture, gel is frequently utilized to entrap cells into a 3-D structure thereof. Therefore, preparation of the gel is required and includes quantification, dispensing, and molding of a gel suspension. However, conventional equipments and devices for liquid dispensing and quantification are not suitable for the gel suspension on account of viscous nature thereof. Thus, dispensing and quantification of the gel suspension may be inaccurate and may influence accuracy of experimental results.
Since high-throughput 3-D cell culture (e.g., 3-D cell culture using a commercial multi-well microplate) has been applied to numerous tasks (such as drug screening and toxin testing), a large amount of 3-D gel having small volume must be produced precisely and simultaneously. Accordingly, an apparatus and a method for efficiently achieving the aforementioned goal are in demand.